Watchdog: Biden USDA Schemed to Use Food Relief Funds to Push Voter Registration

Documents received by PPT via FOIA uncovered a push for food relief funds to go to voter registration forms.

Where do the U.S. election system and government food relief intersect (besides inside the voting booth where the electorate registers its general feeling about the scope of such assistance)? 

They don’t — nor should they. The appropriations process is meant to consider and fund each separately. Thus, combining voter registration mechanisms with nutrition welfare programs for children should raise red flags, especially given the potential partisan implications. 

But that’s what the Biden administration tried to do. New documents obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) creative accounting when it came to voter registration. Worse, programs from food stamps to child nutrition took the brunt of the punishment for USDA’s interesting and innovative solutions.

A March 23, 2022, USDA memo from acting Food and Nutritional Services Supplemental Food Programs Division acting Director Sara Olson to all Special Supplemental Nutritional Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) stated that USDA was requiring all WIC offices to distribute voter registration materials every time the program received an application, recertification, or change in address. Additionally, the memo required WIC state agencies to assist people in “completing the form, as needed,” as well as accept and transmit completed voter registration forms. A memo issued on the same day from Associate Administrator for Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) Jessica Shahin announced the same requirements for all SNAP state agencies. The Trump administration has since rescinded both memos and the executive order they are based upon.

USDA claimed the department could divert federal food assistance funds to bolster its voter registration efforts under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). USDA attorneys cited the legislation as the authority for the department to engage in voter registration efforts via SNAP, the Child Nutrition Program, and others. However, the FOIA documents revealed that the attorneys also indicated that the authority to do so did not really come from the NVRA, but, instead, from former President Biden’s executive order promoting voter registration.

Worse, Shahin told USDA Deputy Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services Stacey Dean that staff “do not recommend mentioning other things that States are reimbursed for” like the government phone access service Lifeline “since the folks that don’t like this don’t like Lifeline either, so they are concerned about raising other things that might start a rabbit trail.”

So much for transparency in government. The USDA efforts look every bit like using the mechanisms of government to increase the party in power’s access to voters — what sales and marketing pros call “touches” — while trying to keep the effort under the radar of anyone who would call it what it is. The very idea of creating an implicit link between such essential services and voting for the party in charge of providing them is cynical at best.

“The phrase ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’ should raise concerns in any American, let alone when it’s said while filling out voter registration applications,” said PPT Director Michael Chamberlain. “The fact that taxpayer dollars to help the hungry were diverted in an attempt to shore up new voters should appall everyone. This is just the latest in a continuing series of events demonstrating why the American public’s trust in its government all but disappeared during the Biden administration.”

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